ChaosTheory: The Fallen Ascendant
by Redshiftja
Summary: A soap opera-esque tale of the rise, fall, and rise of ChaosTheory. Friends will die. Promises will be broken. Ascendants will fall.


**Pilot**

"They're just watching us."

The worgen glanced upwards to the sky, the shadow of a great proto-drake darkening her faceplate. The death knight collapsed, her rune blade stabbing into the barren soil between her knees. She hacked up a splash of dark blood. She was dying. Her cold blue plate armor was battered, and, in some places, utterly broken. Much of it had darkened to black from a crust of coagulated blood – her's or her enemies, Ren was unsure.

Wrapped around her breastplate was her guild tabard, a once ornate fabric that had been embroidered with the eight-sided star of Chaos. It was now a tattered collection of rags that hung loosely to her chest. Only the star remained, faded and blackened by war.

"Ren! Why aren't they helping us?" a silvery robed human shouted to her, unleashing a lance of frost at an orcish shaman.

Ren glanced over her shoulders, Roladmi's frantic shouting but a distant noise in her failing senses. She stared with empty eyes as their desperate stand began to fall apart.

Her friends were still fighting. What was left of them, at least. Thunnaris had been cut down in the previous wave. Gen had been lost in the retreat. Several others too, only Ren had not seen them fall. She could only assume the worst in the kodo charge that had trampled Frenix underfoot.

Minutes earlier, Gabriella, while covering their flank, was shot through the eye by a troll marksman. Even now, Kyln was still holding the hunter in her arms, trying in vain to bring her limp corpse back to life.

Little over than a dozen mounted drakes hovered above the cluster of Alliance warriors. Watching. Watching as they died, one by one.

"Red …" Ren wheezed. She tried standing to her feet, but the vicious gash across her chest sent shocks of searing agony throughout her body.

"-help us!" a druid screamed into the clouds. Ardendor morphed into his bear form, raking his claws through the faceplate of an elven paladin. "Ren, there's too many of them!" With a frenzied roar, he smashed aside several horde warriors with the broadside of his thick hide.

"I know," Ren sobbed in reply. All around her there was Horde. Almost twice their number when they were ambushed had now entered the fray. "It's over."

The ground beneath the death knight's feet rumbled. Ardendor disappeared in a splash of gore as a goblin frag grenade took him.

"Ard - no!" she heard Roladmi shriek. She blinked into the center of a horde kill squad and conjured forth a spiraling ring of frost that glaciated them in a layer of ice. In an instant, they melted away as a pillar of flame rose from the earth to consume them.

In the cloud of swirling ash, a dagger savagely speared through Roladmi's chest. Ren looked away while she went down in a twirl of torn fabric, a blurred silhouette of an elven rogue fading into thin air.

"Red! How could you … why …" She whimpered, weakly. "Abandoned us. All of us."Ren eyed the skies, trying to focus upon the drakonid forms that circled above the killing fields.

But the drakes did nothing. A moaning breeze caressed the flowing crimson tabard that hung from her chest. Her head hung low as she ran a quivering hand across the ragged tabard, her fingers tracing the embroidery with sorrow.

Ren balled a fist around the fabric, and with a sharp cry, tore it from her body. It fluttered to the sand and darkened under the droplets of her life blood.

Finally free, she growled through bloody fangs and wrenched herself and her rune blade from the sand. The death knight's flesh stiffened and her blood froze as the freezing touch of frost crept across her toughening skin. She exhaled an icy breath, her eyes exuding a bluish glow.

Ren howled into the clouds, her cry echoing across the Barrens. She vowed to die with her rune blade clutched in her hands. Two warriors leapt off the roof of a nearby watch tower. She strode forth, the soil riming with ice with every step. Rune sword in her grip, she willed the touch of unholy ice to take one.

An orcish warrior exploded, showering the earth in shards frozen gore. The other, clutching melting ices shrapnel in her gut was clove into two with a single swing of Ren's rune blade. The corpse – both its halves – squelched under Ren's paws.

They festered and bubbled as a cloud of flies rose from the carnage. Faces melted. Veins popped. Horde bled from every orifice. Ren wove through the chaos, spreading the unholy contagion from body to body.

She roared as she worked her unholy blights into the masses, causing the barbarians to wither and die like autumn leaves. Ren raised the dead, commanding them forward unto her enemies to feast upon the living. And when she grew weary, she cut them down with her rune sword.

When even that was knocked from her hands, she raked them with her claws. More and more began to join the battle, and she could only kill so many alone. Jenoric and Kyln, both druids, came to her aid, supporting her with gusts of wind, tooth and claw.

Jenoric slunk between their legs, feigned, and ripped into their throats. It took too many arrows to bring down the feral cat. Baying hysterically, Jenoric launched herself into a crowd of encircling horde. In a heartbeat, she lay dead among half a dozen horde who lay dismembered or bleeding to their death.

Ren's tears froze inside her tear ducts. She swept her rune blade off the sand and swung from left to right, pressing ever onwards to oblivion. She heard's Kyln's gurgling death rattle. In her peripherals, a low slash disemboweled her longtime friend, Kyln's voice becoming lost to the ringing in Ren's ears.

Her eyes saw only a dark tunnel before her. Ren's strength waned, and her blows weakened and she pushed herself closer to the darkness. The world was moving too fast for her to keep up. With what vitality remained, she unleashed an inhuman scream that stopped many horde in their tracks.

The vegetation beneath their feet began to rot. Agonizing screams filled her ears as flesh fell from their bones and a plague of death and decay devoured all that it touched. Though as lives were extinguished, they only bought her time to forestall the inevitable.

Ren raised her rune sword to finish a writhing troll with boils popping across his chest, but a a bed of needles pressed against her flesh. She looked down. The ice had begun to melt, and so did her life blood. It began to seep through the glacial cracks that had caked her abdomen minutes earlier.

She wheezed, hacking up blood and spittle, falling to her knees once more. Ren's vision became blurry, the bluish light in her eyes dimming.

"Red …." She cried, tears streaming down her matted fur. The worgen spun her languid, sunken gaze across the barrens, and the horde circling around her. She struggled to keep her rune sword gripped in her hands, and forced herself to her feet. Ren panned her gaze up into the sky. They were still there.

"No … I won't die sitting down … just so you can watch and laugh, you son of a bitch!" She cried. Ren caught the first attacker in the chest with a downward slash. She stumbled over his corpse, freezing the next solid with a howling blast of ice.

Tackling it to the floor, she shattered the frozen blood elf under her weight. The horde surrounded her, thumping their chests with taunts and mocking the fallen death knight. She could not find the strength of stand once more. Clawing across the sand, she rose to her knees and doubled over with anguish.

She dropped her jaw and howled into the clouds, her life vital fluid pumping out of her with every struggling breath. "I … I hope you're happy." The death knight bared her fangs, uttering, "You've killed us, Red." Ren gasped for another breath, tears streaming down her matted fur. "You've killed us!" With a rasping exhale, she collapsed to the dirt, arterial black pooling around her.

A great winged shadow darkened her face, blocking out the sun before everything went black.

Red gazed silently at the carnage below. Behind the sharp eye holes of his mask stared pitiless eyes that chilled his mounted warriors to the bone. Under a shuddering exhale, he uttered, low enough only for his hears, "_Kar nagas,_ heretics."

"This is sick." He heard one of his lieutenants say with disgust. Promathia fixated upon Red a bewildered stare. "Is this what we've become?" he demanded.

The triumphant war cries of the Horde warriors below reached far into the clouds. They echoed through Red's ears as a twisted smile creased his lips.

"We've only become stronger."

**To be continued … (?)**


End file.
